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Mask of the Betrayer, Storm of Zehir, and Mysteries of Westgate expansions included!

Neverwinter Nights 2: Complete, the ultimate edition of Obsidian's RPG set in the all time favorite Dungeons & Dragons setting, the Forgotten Realms, is now available 25% off on GOG.com. That's $14.99, this week only.

Ah, Forgotten Realms, after all the days we've spent treading your paths, you seem like home. Whenever the world around us seems oppressive and dark, whenever life gets us down--our mind escapes to your green fields, your rocky mountains, your lush forests. We cherish the memories of our bold ventures into your deep undergrounds, filled with dangerous beasts and traps, yet luring us with promise of great riches and unsurpassed power. We still tremble at the thought of the vengeful gods and goddesses that toy with the fates of your inhabitants, and the perplexing magic that fills you to the brim. We fondly remember the long evenings spent in the warmth and security of your many taverns and inns, where a single conversation could usher us into a new quest. Now comes the time to visit you once more.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Complete revisits many of the iconic locations known from previous D&D computer RPGs, and adds even more--all in a beautifully rendered environment. The game has been praised for faithfully executing the D&D 3.5 ruleset, delivering a captivating story and vivid characters, and vastly improving the visuals in comparison to its predecessor. With four full campaigns and adventure sets to embark upon, a set of tools to create your own adventures, and fully patched and ready to go, this is the version you just can't afford to miss!

Can you hear it now? Can you hear the rattling of D20 dice rolling? That's the sound of adventure! Tag along, get Neverwinter Nights 2: Complete, for only $14.99 until Thursday, January 31, at 10:59AM GMT.

Miaghstir: Except that what's described is not a symptom of DRM, but of limited downloads (or not having back-ups of the media in the second case).

I have Darwinia, Torchlight, and Gemini Rue on discs. They're fully DRM-free, but I still wouldn't have access to them if I lost the discs.

I have Mirror's Edge and Half-Life 2 on Steam. Both are DRM'd, but since Steam offers unlimited downloads, I'll keep my access until Steam shuts down (unlikely to happen in a long while).

If GOG shuts down, for whatever reason, I'll lose access to any games I didn't back up.

DRM (in my understanding) tries to limit how/when you use the content once you have it (for example by binding the content to an account, or to the hardware it's installed on), not (primarily) how you acquire said content.

(Please note that despite the post perhaps sounding differently, I much prefer DRM-free content that requires backing-up to DRM'd that doesn't - better yet is DRM-free that doesn't, like GOG.)

So D2D downloads didn't have DRM? I wasn't all too familiar with that service so I assumed while reading Tapeworm00's post that he/she had lost the game due to DRM. If not, well, the same might (and undoubtedly will) happen to people when GOG shuts down. Call it paranoia, but I always keep two backups of all of my GOG games.

As for Steam, I "own" a bunch of games there, but due to the uncertainty of what might happen to them when the Steam service ends, I always regard those games as if I only "half-owned" them. I'm not the kind of gamer who buys a game when it's released, plays it once, and then forgets about it (though don't get me wrong, that's perfectly fine). If I like a game, I'm inclined to pick it up again years or even decades later, and Steam does not make me feel like my games are safe. Who knows what will happen to them in 20 years?

Eh, I could go on about this endlessly, but I've ranted enough for now.

adamzs: So D2D downloads didn't have DRM? I wasn't all too familiar with that service so I assumed while reading Tapeworm00's post that he/she had lost the game due to DRM. If not, well, the same might (and undoubtedly will) happen to people when GOG shuts down. Call it paranoia, but I always keep two backups of all of my GOG games.

As for Steam, I "own" a bunch of games there, but due to the uncertainty of what might happen to them when the Steam service ends, I always regard those games as if I only "half-owned" them.

D2D likely had DRM (different DRM for different games, I'd wager, similar to Gamersgate), but DRM is not the problem described in Tapeworm00's post. Lack of access to copies is.

If copies were available (as backups or if the download website were still online), and the game could not be played (due to requiring registration with servers that had been taken offline), then it'd be a problem of DRM.

While I don't keep two separate copies of my GOG files, I do download them very soon after I buy them, and redownload every time I notice an update. I wouldn't dream of calling you paranoid, if you cannot trust yourself with your data, who can you trust?

Miaghstir: I have Mirror's Edge and Half-Life 2 on Steam. Both are DRM'd, but since Steam offers unlimited downloads, I'll keep my access until Steam shuts down (unlikely to happen in a long while).

I would say that statement is true for very short periods of "a long while", unless your life expectancy is on the wrong side of the bell curve. Me, on the other hand, I expect to live forever so I want to be able to play my games no matter how many decades have gone past, so I prefer my entertainment to be DRM-free.

Miaghstir: I have Mirror's Edge and Half-Life 2 on Steam. Both are DRM'd, but since Steam offers unlimited downloads, I'll keep my access until Steam shuts down (unlikely to happen in a long while).

mangamuscle: I would say that statement is true for very short periods of "a long while", unless your life expectancy is on the wrong side of the bell curve. Me, on the other hand, I expect to live forever so I want to be able to play my games no matter how many decades have gone past, so I prefer my entertainment to be DRM-free.

That statement was not intended to indicate a preference for Steam, as stated at the end of that post. Yes, "a long while" was perhaps not the correct phrasing.

Darkcloud: Woah the game still doesn't run well with AA on on my PC. The engine is really poorly optimized. On the other hand CPU usage is nearly non existent.

It's not so much "poor optimization" as much as "realistic realtime shadowing". The sun moves in NWN2 (which it didn't in NWN1) and every time it does, every shadow cast by every object has to be recalculated and redrawn. That's a massive amount of work but you then get effects like sunsets casting long shadows which don't appear in most other games.

Later games like Dragon Age or Drakensang avoid this by not implementing day/night cycles at all - as well as avoiding all that recalculation, they can go further by not calculating shadows for static objects (buldings, trees, etc) and instead "painting" those shadows on the ground, reducing shadow processing to just those objects that move.

Luckily NWN2 offers loads of graphics options allowing people to configure it to best run on their system - the first PC I ran it on (quad core 2.4GHz Q6600 + 768MB 8800GTX) could handle 2560x1600 at almost max settings. However for transparency AA (enabled via driver settings, necessary if you want AA on tree leaves and character hairlines) I needed to upgrade to a 460GTX. If you have an SLI system, forcing it (AFR2 in Nvidia's control panel) should provide a modest (30-40%) framerate boost.

Those with lots of GPU memory (700MB+) should check out NeilMC's Texture Mods which greatly improve the look of the game, especially his paving stones and floorboards.

This is an instabuy for me too, even though the disc version is DRM-free with the latest patch thanks to the inclusion of Mysteries of Westage (the first time it's been offered DRM-free - Ossian/Atari removed the activation limits but never the need to activate in the first place). For those on the fence about it - I'd join in the chorus of praise for the first expansion (Mask of the Betrayer) but the original campaign was good fun also. It had (and still has) some problems (certain scripts not always firing off, some storyline implausibilities) but it is streets ahead of NWN's and compares well with Baldur's Gate (though not offering as many sidequests).

Kaldor Silverwand's NWN2 OC Makeover SoZ Edition and NWN2 MotB Makeover SoZ Edition do include some fixes as well as offering SoZ features (new crafting system, ability to run a SoZ party, etc). They also restore a number of items (e.g. the Nasher collection) making them worth considering even for first time players.

I gotta ask. What is the difference between this version and the one I picked up on GG ages ago? I mean besides the extras that GOG includes. I will pick up this one eventually being the completionist that I am, but I'm wondering if there are any significant differences between these two releases. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

the_bard: ...What is the difference between this version and the one I picked up on GG ages ago? I mean besides the extras that GOG includes...

If you're referring to Gamersgate's NWN2 Complete Bundle then both contain the same items (NWN2, MotB, SoZ and MoW). GOG's bundle is DRM-free and is the only DRM-free version of MoW available that I know of (the disc versions of the other items are DRM-free once patched up to the latest version, which removed the disc check).

I played NWN2 absolutely to death and even started writing a continuation fic for my paladin character.

My only irritation with this is that the soundtracks for MOTB and SOZ don't have any metadata. Managed to put together a tracklist for the MOTB soundtrack, though, and have submitted the result to the content team.

the_bard: ...What is the difference between this version and the one I picked up on GG ages ago? I mean besides the extras that GOG includes...

AstralWanderer: If you're referring to Gamersgate's NWN2 Complete Bundle then both contain the same items (NWN2, MotB, SoZ and MoW). GOG's bundle is DRM-free and is the only DRM-free version of MoW available that I know of (the disc versions of the other items are DRM-free once patched up to the latest version, which removed the disc check).

Yeah, I never installed my GG version, but now that I look at there's an awful lot of keys. Thanks.

Looking from Germany, ID want $30 for NWN 1 + 2. So $15 for just one seems perfectly fine.

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I want this but with a long list of other things to play I'm torn between supporting GOG now, or waiting till its on sale at some distant point in the future. However I've left my self with no time to buy it as I now need to get my daughter from KG. Procrastination is king :/ :)

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Edit: gah, I ended up grabbing it. It's been on my list for ages to buy (previously on Steam), so I couldn't pass it up in the end. Even if it will be an age before I play it.

Nearly couldn't though as I couldn't scroll the CC year list on the iPhone. The year I wanted was stuck under the menu at the top of the page!